Saturday, December 12, 2015

In atonement, and also as tribute to the forth-coming Star Wars movie, I am offering up some very special links this Saturday morning.

George Lucas did everything he could to manipulate the audience of Star Wars into believeing that the Empire were the bad guys. He dressed them in black. He had them line up in big elaborate Leni Refinstahl-style formations, like Nazis in space. He made the guys we were really supposed to not like ugly, on top of it. He gave Empire officers foreign accents. British accents. Anakin Skywalker started off with an American accent and only acquired a (fake) British accent when he became Darth Vader and joined the Empire. The films of George Lucas are many things, but they are not subtle.

Note: Critics of this view would point out that Jedi "good guy" Obi-Wan Kinobi also had a British accent when played by both Sir Alec Guiness and Ewan McGregor. Does this invalidate the accent claim? On the other side of things you have, in addition to Vader's fake UK drawl, Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin, Christopher Lee as the ludicrous Count Dookoo, and a whole host of lesser known Empire officer characters with speaking roles, like Captain/Admiral Firmus Piett. Some have made the argument that the British accent was used to delineate the old Empire/Republic from the "new" Rebellion. My view is that a single contradiction does not disprove the rule if we are arguing about the "original intent" of someone like George Lucas. As Walt Whitman might say, Lucas "contains multitudes", to put it very politely.

In this article, now nearly 13 years old, Jonathan Vlast dared to thumb his nose at the screaming mass of Star Wars fanboys by presenting an incredibly controversial argument. What if Lucas was wrong? What if, given the information provided to us in the Star Wars films, the Empire are actually the good guys? After all, isn't the Rebellion fighting to reinstate the Republic - which allowed slavery and was governed by a Senate made completely ineffectual by infighting, bureaucracy and corruption? Aren't the Jedi a group of religious extremists whose requirement for membership is based on the genetics of the applicant? Within the logic of the films, the color of someone's skin is determined the same way that the presence of "metachlorians" are - at birth. Metachlorians are imaginary microorganisms responsible for giving individuals "the force", a mystical power used by members of the Jedi cult to control people's minds, engage in violence and even commit murder. You can't be a Jedi without being born with the metachlorian genetic trait, and in the Republic, Jedi are automatically granted special privileges and influence within society. We find it morally reprehensible to grant special privileges and influence because someone is born with the genetic trait for white skin. Yet in Star Wars, George Lucas would have us believe that granting special privileges and influence because someone is born with a certain genetic trait is virtuous - preferable to the more meritocratic style of government used by the Empire. Would you risk your life, or kill someone, so that a pair of incestuous twins can rule the galaxy with a cult of their extended cousins?

The Washington Post was kind enough to provide space in their cherished publication for the delightfully-named Sonny Bunch to jump on the pro-Empire bandwagon. Pro-Jedi propagandists have long pointed to the controversial destruction of the planet Alderaan as proof positive of the Empire inherent evil. But Bunch bravely bandies about a bone of contention (heh), offering a well-reasoned argument that the sacking of Alderaan was justified within a moderate understanding of the Rules of Just War. Far from an unarmed planet of peaceniks, Alderaan was the intellectual and economic seat of the Rebellion, home to its founding members and a hub for spies and conspirators. A "boots-on-the-ground" invasion of Alderaan would have almost certainly proved unwinnable, providing instead an opportunity for Jedi fanatics to radicalize the regional population and to drag other planets into the intractable conflict. The use of a Death Star remote or "drone attack" saves the lives of brave Empire soldiers, as well as those who would have been converted into foreign fighters.

By "Comfortably Smug" - Decider
Finally, we have my favorite of all of these contrarian Star Wars analyses. Pseudonymous government-relations professional "Comfortably Smug" relies on the work of social Psychologists and analysts with the Journal of Homeland Security to illustrate how the Star Wars films are in reality the story of one man's dark descent from an innocent farm boy to a hardened, murderous religious extremist.

In hindsight, it is obvious that Luke Skywalker fits the profile of an ideal potential terrorist: an absentee father, no friends outside the home, no strong social bonds or identity. Luke was targeted by Obi-Wan Kenobi, a terrorist recruiter with a decades-long history of training child soldiers. The tragic death of Luke's parents, collateral damage in a lawful targeted killing of insurgents, was used by Kenobi to push Luke over the edge toward a path of murder and self-destruction.

After escaping authorities by relying on his contacts with drug smugglers, Kenobi would ultimately die during a suicide attack on a high-ranking military official, but he would succeed in manipulating Skywalker into taking part in an illegal terrorist bombing that killed tens of thousands of brave soldiers and unarmed private contractors. The next film would show Luke Skywalker join a terrorist training camp / madrassah, where Mullah Yoda uses brain-washing techniques to coerce Luke to abandon whatever traces of individuality and humanity are left, and teaches him advanced guerrilla warfare techniques. In the final film, Kenobi and Yoda would use their hold over Skywalker to convince him to launch a suicide attack on a government facility. Although Skywalker survived the attack, he succeeded in murdering both the Emperor and his own father, a decorated, and handicapped, military veteran.

About Me

Joshua Wieder has been a systems administrator for close to 10 years - specializing in data center and hosting infrastructure using redhat linux, cisco ios, vmware, KVM and containers such as docker and kubernetes. Get in touch with Josh Wieder here on Google+ or using one of the websites on the links page.